


The Lost Ones

by spinsterclaire



Series: For Imagine Claire and Jamie [16]
Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: F/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-23
Updated: 2017-11-23
Packaged: 2019-02-05 20:39:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12801933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spinsterclaire/pseuds/spinsterclaire
Summary: Prompt: In episode 8, Claire tells Jamie that whenever she heard birdsong she would pretend that Jamie was talking to her. Could we have a fic where Claire hears birds singing and she is talking to Jamie. Maybe while in a park with Brianna.





	The Lost Ones

The had sea raged since sundown, our modest ship flung from trough to crest without the slightest thought for her passengers. As a result, any snatch of rest was compromised by the  _Artemis_ ’ constant tossing, my cabin thrown about like a helpless plaything. My limbs hit the hard planks of the walls, and the sudden loll of my neck—once jellied by deep unconsciousness—brought me into a painful wakefulness. I moved my legs, trying to stretch the stiffness out of them, but my knees met something more solid than wood: Jamie, lying beside me.

At some point in the night, he’d crept into my bunk, disregarding the fact that his stepdaughter lay just above us. Not that he was inclined for anything beyond sleep. No, the only thing my husband was capable of on stormy seas was retching into the bucket kept within his reach. Presently, its lack of odorous contents indicated that he hadn’t made full use of it—yet.

Despite my daily cups of ginger tea, it was acupuncture that had ultimately alleviated some of Jamie’s sickness. Tonight, I knew his coming hadn’t been driven by nausea, but by a feeling that had become my own steadfast bedmate since our onboard separation: a homesickness for the heart and flesh.

Until now, I hadn’t minded that Jamie had tip-toed into my room, laying himself clumsily beside me. But my cramped quarters were claustrophobic enough without the addition of his sharp elbows, which kept thumping my abdomen with the relentlessness of a jack hammer.

I sat up, trying to adjust myself into a more comfortable position, when I heard Jamie’s sleepy voice rise above the ruckus.

“Yer awake, Sassenach?”

“Hard not to be,” I said. “It’s like a bloody tsunami out there.”

“Aye, it just may be,” Jamie croaked. One eye opened, peering owlishly through the dark, to see me narrowly avoid a collision between my head and my bunk’s ceiling. “I feel as though one’s starting to roil in my gut, at least.”

“Please,” I said, nodding towards the available bucket at his side, “direct any bodily tsunamis over there.”

“Dinna fash. Willoughby has set me straight—for the most part.”

“The  _other_  part is what I’m fashing myself about,” I said, nudging him gently away. He smiled, though I noticed the sudden pensiveness of his expression when my face caught the glare of the moonlight, lancing through the grated windows.

“Are you all right?” he asked, a concerned hand finding my thigh. The weight of it, warm and reassuring, dispelled the lingering memories that had disturbed me in my dreams. “Ye look…”

“It’s nothing,” I said, all too unconvincingly. Even without the lit lanterns, I knew Jamie could sense my lie, and felt his grip tighten, as if to urge the honesty out of me.

As always, the security of his touch—the dichotomy of its firmness and the way it pried me open—made my words come easily.

“I told you, at Lallybroch, about the birds?” I said now, softly.

“Aye. You said you used to speak to them, as if you were speaking to me.” Again, his touch seemed to respond to my own subconscious will for confession, and I melted into it. If someone were to ask why I loved him, I would cite this moment: the way his tone indicated no trace of scorn, or disbelief, in my bizarre behavior.

“And I told ye as how a plover mourns,” he continued. “Condemned to the grave by the death of their mate.”

I sighed and nodded.

“I was wondering if perhaps…well, if it wasn’t just the romantic sort of mate. Or if it wasn’t only plovers that felt grief.”

“Ye mean—”

“I mean: I mourned for you. Of course I did. But that wasn’t the first time I had felt, I don’t know,  _heard_  by a bird. It had happened before when—” And here I swallowed, wanting to say her name without faltering. My voice betrayed me, though, cracking as soon as it formed on my tongue. How could it not? 

“When Faith died,” I managed finally. “Even then, I saw birds. Not a plover, not that time, but a blue heron—and I didn’t feel quite so alone then, either.”

“Claire…”

“It’s been over 20 years, Jamie; I’ve stopped grieving for her. If that sounds terrible then at least I know it.” I tried to hide the sudden sheen in my eyes, but Jamie refused to let me turn away. He held my chin, witnessing my guilt and sorrow with understanding, not judgment.

“The awareness of her loss hasn’t gone away, of course. It’s more of a hollowed presence now, or an emptiness that’s been normalized. But a bird would come to my windowsill every now and then, and I swear she’d be there, listening. And I could hear her too somehow.” I paused, before adding quietly: “All the sounds she never made.”

“What ye have with Faith, Sassenach—what any parent has with their child—it’s beyond what can be explained. If ye feel it, it’s real.”

“You sound like the crew mates.”

“The crew mates’ beliefs may no’ always be logical, but there are things that canna be explained by logic. You, of all people, ken that.”

“Well when you put it that way,” I said, my eyes drifting towards the moonbeam, which still creeped down the walls with a trickle of water. “It’s the same with Brianna, you know—I can’t stop thinking about her. Envisioning all the pieces of her life that I’ve lost.”

“And the birds?”

“There was an cormorant flying alongside us the other day. And it was like Brianna was next to me, trying to tell me everything that I’ve missed.”

Jamie turned onto his back, silent, but still kept his arm wrapped around me.

“I’ve no’ met her,” he said after a while. “And I’ve no’ seen her either, save for the photographs ye showed me. But I think I feel her too sometimes. When it’s neither day nor night. When it seems as though time doesna exist, and it’s only me and whatever lays out there, within and beyond the sea. A world that I’ve no’ seen, but that I ken—I _feel_. She’s there, somewhere, I’m sure of it. And I wonder if she feels me here, too.

“Whatever happens when we pass, or when we canna be wi’ the ones we love…I think there’s something that remains, always. That’s why we can mourn, or can feel the lost ones when they’re gone. Our greatest loves—well. I dinna think they can be broken by something as simple as time or place.”

I hummed into his shoulder, and then raised my face to his.

“I suppose we, of all people, should know that.” I said, echoing him and resting my head against his chest.

“Aye, Sassenach. I think we do.”

And as the  _Artemis_  continued her rough passage through the night, I no longer minded the constant upheaval, or the crowdedness of my bunk. I knew that when time and place had taken their final tolls, I would miss the imposition of Jamie’s body—though it would never stop pressing itself into my own, letting me know that Jamie was there long after he, or I, was gone.


End file.
